Astral Rage
An original creation for the mod, the Astral Rage is a special ghost enemy. Tactics and Behavior The Astral Rage appears as a blueish, translucent humanoid phantom. When idle, it walks around in random directions while chanting unintelligibly. It is blind, so you can approach it safely in this state. This changes once a weapon is fired. When it hears a player firing a weapon, the Astral Rage will seek to strike in a kamikaze attack, running at extremely high speed in order to explode at its target. However, after a few seconds of pursuit, the Astral Rage will relent and return to the idle state. An attacking Astral Rage is one of the fastest monsters in Hunter's Moon, and is very difficult to either keep in sight or run away from (the only reliable method of escaping this monster is rocket jumping). It hardly ever assaults you straight ahead, preferring to zig-zag in wide turns. The explosion attack is very powerful, usually dealing around 100 points of damage upon direct strike, and has a very large splash radius. Consequently, this enemy has to be taken out from a distance. When encountered with other enemy types, it may advisable to retreat onto a more advantageous position, not firing a shot before you reach a good spot to engage the Astral Rage (such as a higher floor). The Astral Rage is one of the weakest opponents, and will die pretty much instantly to any weapon that can harm it. However, being a ghost, the Astral Rage is immune to ballistic attacks, meaning that it ignores solid projectiles. Therefore, the Machine Gun, the HMG, the Shotgun, the Chaingun and the Nailgun cannot injure it - their shots will pass through it every time. To kill it, you will need an explosion or a directed-energy weapon. Normally, the Railgun is the best option, since it will kill the Astral Rage in an instant, not giving it any chance to dodge. Otherwise, the Lightning Gun should also easily kill the ghost, provided that you do not let him run away from your field of vision. The Grenade Launcher is pretty much useless without a high ground advantage. The Rocket Launcher and the Trakion Cannon may be viable at closer ranges. The Plasma Gun is decently effective, depending on your aiming skills with this weapon. The BFG10k kills the Astral Rage easily thanks to the high velocity and large splash radius of its shots. The Dark Matter Gun and the Cynetik Striker Cannon also do not find much difficulty in killing this type of enemy, thanks to the special properties of their projectiles - however, as they both are also very slow projectiles, it is not recommended to engage these weapons against the explosive ghost, because it can outrun their projectiles. Interesingly - being another kind of explosion - the Shotgun's Ultimate Fire Mode can also kill the Astral Rage, but since this attack has a very limited range, it is virtually of no use against this enemy. At the first maps, when the player doesn't possess any weapon that is suitable to deal with this ghost, it is advised to use Gauntlet whenever possible to kill other weaker demons around - the Astral Rage ignores the Gauntlet's grinding sound and keeps wandering harmlessly. The Astral Rage inflicts damage to other demons as well, serving as a pseudo-Barrel in such situations, cleaning the surroundings where it exploded. This property can sometimes be quite useful when hitting it with a Grenade from a higher ground or out-of-sight corners, to make them explode and using their explosion to wipe out most of the enemies nearby. This enemy does not give Excellent Medals when killing them and neither recharges Ability nor weapons' Ultimate Fire Mode. Vehicle Tactics Another curiosity posed by the Astral Rage is the fact that its kamikaze explosion delivers four times more damage against vehicles than players afoot. For the mounted players, this enemy is a high priority - a contact explosion from the Astral Rage can reduce the vehicle armor by some 400 points. The GEV Tank has only one tactic available against this enemy: point at it with the Main Cannon and fire. Obviously, the Tank's Machine Gun is useless. On the other hand, the Cyclops can use any attack, but of course the melee attacks will expose the mech to the full might of the Astral Rage's explosion. Instead, simply use one of the Cyclops' cannons to blast the ghost from afar. Trivia #The Astral Rage's model is a modified Unwilling from Doom 4, remade into a ghost enemy. #When killed with a Gauntlet, the Astral Rage does not drop bonus Armor Pieces. Category:Enemies Category:Demons